What women want -
Isle of Thanet Gazette 31st March 2006
In a triumph of planning, I managed to find myself with speaking engagements three nights running last week.
By the time I got to the Broadstairs Rotary Club on Thursday I had already been to their Margate brethren on Wednesday, and held forth to a media group in London the day before.
Eventually even I get bored with the sound of my voice banging on about the same things, so I was grateful to Philip Earwicker from the Broadstairs lot, for not only booking me, but supplying the title for my talk as well. "Should men still open doors for the Fairer Sex?" he proposed.
This was easy. I stood up. "Yes," I said, and sat down again.
Roger Barwick, the vice-president, seated beside me and suitably attentive to my wine-glass (always a plus point) had already described the Rotary Club as the "last bastion of male sexism." This is not necessarily a bad thing.
As far as holding doors goes, that is good manners whatever one's gender but personally I'm also happy for men to buy the drinks, pay for dinner, bring flowers and go and fetch the car when it's pouring with rain. I am equally pleased to do this back when the need arises (perhaps leaving out the latter if it involves getting very wet).
I am not quite so keen on taking rubbish out, changing tyres, carrying heavy bags, disposing of spiders and unblocking drains so I'd rather these were handled on a uni-lateral basis.
For those gentlemen still confused, I offer the following general guidelines:
* Being told you are gorgeous always goes down well, being slapped on the bottom by way of a greeting (as one Rotary Member who shall remain nameless saw fit to do) probably doesn't. (In fact while he - we could call him Fred - might just get away with that sort of thing with a wishy-washy lipstick-feminist like me who'd already had two gins, the cropped hair and dungarees-wearing variety is liable to punch him between the eyes).
* Being paid less than a man is despicable, being given his coat to wear in a snowstorm is only polite.
* Jokes about female drivers aren't funny unless they're about school-run mothers with 4x4s who can't park (we all know what they're like) and perfume is a good present to give the woman in your life but a new pair of rubber gloves is not.
* When she asks how she looks she does not want to hear the truth - any more than you want an in-depth analysis of your paunch and thinning bits - and while your bringing home roses (we are talking blooms but the chocolate variety will do in a crisis) will always gain approval, being boring about why England didn't win, won't.
I also have a theory that there is a direct correlation between how successful, powerful and independent a woman is and how much she secretly hankers to be swept off her feet by a seven-foot hunk, which the members of the Rotary Club being the last bastion etc appeared to appreciate the finer details of, and the editor of this newspaper being that same successful woman with a family readership to consider, may not. For those who'd like to hear more I may offer a series of lectures. You buy the drinks, I'll open the door...